By Ryan Leighty

If you’re searching for Nike shoes, you might go to Nike.com and browse. But what if you want to know more about Nike as a company? Say you wanted to research their sustainability commitments and practices before you buy your new kicks. In that case, you can visit nike.com/sustainability and find a whole mini-website dedicated to everything Nike and eco-friendly.

Nike’s sustainability hub is a great example of a microsite. It helps a particular audience explore a single topic, with depth and breadth of coverage. It’s easier for people to find the information they’re looking for and explore related topics, too.

Microsites can be a powerful way for B2B brands to reach specific audiences with specific messages. Here’s what you need to know about microsites for SEO.

Developing a microsite SEO strategy

Microsites have a bad reputation in some SEO circles, and it’s true the technique can come off as spammy or convoluted if it’s not done properly. But the right microsite strategy helps everyone:

• Improves the user experience
• Helps people find information easily
• Highlights topics important to your brand
• Helps your audience self-select
• Builds your domain’s authority around a specific area

But let’s start with the basics:

What is a microsite?

A microsite is a small standalone website with a specific focus on a topic, product, campaign, sub-brand or event. They usually have their own subdomain or even a unique url, such as business.att.com or HubSpot’s Website Grader at website.grader.com.

Advantages of microsites for B2B

There are a few key ways that a microsite can improve your site SEO and your customers’ experience:

1. Targeted content. Microsites are highly focused, which helps attract niche audiences and can boost rankings for long-tail keywords.
2. Link building. When microsites are crosslinked with the main website, it helps the SEO of both sites.
3. Enhanced user experience. Microsites encourage users to explore the entire collection of pages, which helps boost time on page, lower bounce rates, and signal to search engines that the content is valuable.
4. Brand authority. Specialized microsites can establish a brand’s authority on a particular topic, with in-depth content that boosts credibility.

Microsites in action: A case study

A TopRank Marketing client has a solution with two distinct audiences: 

1. Individual end users, who might purchase a monthly subscription (B2C)
2. HR leaders, who would purchase a business licenses for their teams (B2B)

It’s easy to see how these two audiences need dramatically different messaging. Trying to reach both with one site was underserving the B2B audience and failing to generate traction.

To better reach the B2B audience, we helped this client develop a microsite focused on the benefits of …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog

Author: Aaron